ironmaneden.com

ironmaneden.com

exploring plant-based nutrition as an ancient biblical ideal

Creation

Blog #14: Tree on Fire on a Mountain

by rambler on category , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My wife was telling me about a podcast she was listening to while coming home from work one day, She Explores, which in general highlights stories of women’s experiences in nature and how these relate to life experiences in business, equality, family, etc. This particular piece was about the Cairn Project, who in their words, “expands outdoor access by supporting community-based wilderness and outdoor education groups around the country through a small grants program for girls and young women.” One of the groups they support, Embark, is involved in providing outdoor mentorship to refugee girls who are resettled within Utah. Through exposures to the mountainous natural world, whether it be camping, rock climbing, or other wilderness adventures, the organization gathers recently resettled girls from various countries around the world, including from Asia and Africa, and provides an avenue to test themselves, learn new skills, and develop self-confidence. Their idea is that learning to conquer physical challenges in this environment will give them the belief that they can also conquer the numerous other challenges that come with being a resettle female refugee. Having to learn a new language, a new order to basic community infrastructure, a new way to travel and collect daily items is something most of us have never had to do. Hopefully, challenging oneself in the shared outdoor environment, in physically difficult situations, will lead toward growing resilience and leadership skills that many of their participants have yet to uncover in their life journeys.

Since moving to western North Carolina 13 years ago, I have called the mountains home (excluding a year living in northern Ghana). Between the Blue Ridge and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, our back doors have been the first step toward individual and family adventure, whether it be running or cycling on the Blue Ridge Parkway a few miles or a few tens of miles, hiking the narrow trails in the crevices of the Hoh River rainforests towards Mount Olympus, or taking one of the numerous trails at either place for a day outing. Among my first memories of northwest Washington is the mountain range on Vancouver Island sitting atop the Strait of Juan de Fuca and hovering beneath a clear blue sky. Later memories include the same mountain range peaking out from low fog over the strait, as well as those tops covered in clouds and the green bases staring at us across the water, dwarfing the freight lines headed for the ports of Seattle and Vancouver. There never seems to be a shortage of fun and inspiration from our local environments, no matter the season. As summer approaches, the return of tourists on the Blue Ridge Parkway will be a reminder of the draw to the mountains, for vistas, fresh air, physical activity, serenity, challenges, etc.

We are drawn to mountains for several reasons. The grandeur of them towering above all surroundings is breathtaking and can make us feel small and in awe of their massiveness. The different ecosystems they house provide delicate complexity to the balance of the greater environment and draw curious souls to come observe them meticulously and artistically. The ways they affect local climates draw people to live under their rain shadows. The ways streams and pools interact with rock and slope create some of the most beautiful and dangerous meetings of earth and water on the planet. We are drawn to them for their beauty and their challenge. A level of physical strength and endurance is required to explore and intimately learn these places, whether it be through scaling peaks, crossing glacial fields, or hiking on primitive trails. Several mountains are easily accessible with day hikes on tamed paths, but by far the majority demand a deeper commitment and focus to get to know. We often go to them to test our mettle, to build strength, whether it is mental, physical, spiritual, or social.

Burning man?

It should be no wonder that these places feature frequently in the Hebrew Bible, as places of challenge, places to meet the divine, places of uncertainty. In the first reboot of creation, the ark that contained all the preserved land animals comes to rest upon Ararat, which also hosts the first burnt sacrifice on an altar. Mount Moriah is where Abraham takes his son to offer as a sacrifice, only to have a provision in his place, hence passing his test. The story of Elijah calling upon Yahweh to ignite a water-soaked sacrifice and prove His power to the Israelites happens on Mount Carmel. The transfiguration of Jesus of Nazareth is said to have happened on Mount Tabor, and the Mount of Olives is where Jesus has his final test in the Garden, where the Jewish scholars and Roman soldiers seize him.

All the above stories have an element of danger in them, points of uncertainty of what is happening and what is coming next. Symbolically and physically, mountains represent danger, places where the weather can change lethally and without notice. Add the presence of God in the mix and that aura is increased exponentially. In three of the above stories, fire is present, just as on Mount Sinai in the tree where Moses first speaks with Yahweh.

While Eden isn’t explicitly stated to be on a mountain, we can surmise that the garden is in fact on the top of a mountain. Four rivers flow forth from Eden in Genesis 2: the Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon, and Pishon. Scholars debate the location of the ancient Gihon and Pishon Rivers, with several believing the Gihon flowed through Ethiopia, making it physically impossible for all four rivers to come from the same source. Again, reading the Bible in its context, the point of this description is likely to say that all of life, all of civilization, flowed forth from this cosmic mountain. In the metaphor of all life-giving rivers flowing from a single source, that source would have to be higher than everywhere else, hence a mountain. Several ancient religious traditions have the idea of a cosmic temple mountain, like Eden.

Many modern Christians probably think of Eden as a lavish, peaceful, perfect resort garden where everything was at its pinnacle. I wrote earlier how this was unlikely the case in reference to human work being part of our calling. If Eden is a cosmic mountain, where God lived, would its presence in the garden appear as a peaceful, serene singularity? Or would it be expressed more so how it was elsewhere in the Bible, as fire in a tree, a storm cloud upon Sinai, or fire raining down from heaven onto an altar? This brings us to the point in the garden where the presence dwelled: the Tree of Life. God-Elohim commanded humans to eat from every tree in the Garden, including the Tree of Life, and not from one specific tree. Why did Eve and Adam not eat from this tree, which was right next to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? The latter was “good to the eye”; was the former not?

Ironman Tulsa

The burning bush (s’neh tree) on Mount Horeb was fear-striking to Moses; the entire mountain (s’neh  Sinai) was fear-striking to the Hebrews. Could the Tree of Life have appeared similarly to the Adam, as a tree radiating with fire, striking fear into the hearts of humankind? God’s presence must have appeared impossibly powerful and challenging. It didn’t appear safe in their eyes, and the alternative tree did. Likewise, the Tree of Life on top of the mountain garden is not safe in our eyes. It will strike fear in our hearts. Its future revelations in the Bible appear equally deadly, even shameful, whether it be on Sinai, Mount Carmel, or on Golgotha where Jesus of Nazareth hung from a Roman execution rack, also referred to as a tree by some Christians. Synonymous to eating from the Tree of Life, approaching God and submitting to his wisdom appears counter-intuitive and treacherous. It means exchanging our version of prudence for one that is hazardously foreign to our comprehension of the world. It is here, on top of a mountain, where humans can come near to the spirit and decide whether to take from the tree that appears perilous but ultimately leads to the vision of the same tree in Revelation 22, which provides fruit continuously and medicine for the world.

Humans have looked to mountains for millennia in search of something, whether it is God, themselves, or nature. I have yet to climb a mountain and see a tree on fire. Odds are I won’t. Not physically. Recently I participated in an Ironman race in Tulsa. While not known for mountainous terrain, the last mile was an uphill shot to the finish line. Lucky for me I didn’t see a burning tree at the end, otherwise I would have questioned a turn I took somewhere on the course (Tulsa was busy that weekend with several events going on. There may have been a gathering of folks burning trees to celebrate or denote something). But I did get a rush of joy and satisfaction at finishing the event. It reminds me of all the Eden hot-spots around us all the time, whether at the finish lines of grueling athletic events, in personal or community gardens with veggies percolating under the soil to create life for several organisms, or sharing coffee and conversation with someone. Somewhere in all those places perhaps is the semblance of a tree on fire.

Blog 13: coronavirus: apocalypse or new creation?

by rambler on category , , , , , , , , ,

          

  Several media pundits and commentators have compared the novel coronavirus outbreak with a catastrophic apocalypse, an end of times event not seen for a few generations.  Since the initial outbreak, this globe-changing particle has spread rapidly throughout our interconnected world at a pace never seen before in human history.  It has infected people of all ethnicities, with small, but present, regard for social status or individual notoriety.  Hospitals all over the world have been overrun with patients, equipment needed to treat the sickest has dwindled rapidly, and body bags have been in high demand for many of the more advanced countries.  At the time of this writing, as we all remain at home at this point several weeks into quarantine, with the end nowhere in sight, the feeling of societal catastrophe continues to set in, knowing that neighbors are dying, social isolation is the norm, and economic recession will likely greet us whenever the rates of infection have dwindled enough to allow us to return to our prior way of living.  No wonder many have used the term apocalypse to describe our world in 2020.

            While many people have been either out of work, furloughed, or working from home, I continued with my daily commute to the clinic.  During this grim time, I couldn’t help but juxtapose what I would hear on the radio on that drive to work with what I saw all around the Alleghany County countryside.  Spring had arrived.  Skies were blue, the air crisp, leaf buds popping out of the ends of tree branches, and birds singing their ruach to the wind.  Bees swarmed out ready to pollinate our flowers and grasses.  Trees were actively sprouting new branches.  Deer returned back up the mountain for the springtime migration.  In this sense, the earth was cycling on annually as it has for time immemorial, not knowing that that humans are dealing with something that cycles every century.

            Through all the chaos and heartbreaking stories of young and old getting sick from this virus, there are redemptive stories of what is happening to the earth since global lockdown went into place.  The canals of Venice became suddenly clear, with fish visibly meandering through them without having to dodge gondolas.  The globe was no longer physically oscillating, as it had been when human activity was at its peak.  Pollution levels were drastically cut everywhere, with visibility at levels never seen by this generation throughout the most populous cities on Earth. Some animals were found venturing into human habitat, where fields and forests once occupied the space. Humanity’s detrimental footprint was, for the time being, quickly beginning to be filled in with the healing processes that push Nature back toward homeostasis.  This sounds like the opposite of an apocalypse from Nature’s perspective.  This is a renewal, a return of our environment to its prior functionally pure state. Our bodies have unimaginable means by which to heal themselves.  The Earth does as well.

            This picture of the earth returning to what it was brings up ideas of a return to New Creation, a revival from the apocalypse the earth found itself in.  This obviously is not the first time an event like this has happened which lead to a renewal of the earth from the hands of people.  Plagues, wars, any event that lowers the human population burden of the globe may end up creating an opportunity for a natural revival.  It’s a cyclical phenomenon of destructive humans being removed in order to maintain some integrity of the order by which the world works.  In the Hebrew Bible, the flood narrative is one of the earliest examples of this event.  I cannot help but think the coronavirus has played a similar role, a natural result coming out of human indifference for the functionality of our planet as told by both the science of ecology, human physiology, and Genesis 1.  The natural correction is this: by targeting the factor causing chaos, the natural order now has a chance to return itself to what it was meant to be, the glorified reflection of the creator being.

            In the last posting, I wrote about the direct link between humans and coronavirus and the practices that led to the global infiltration.  This perhaps could have been prevented if we were able to live according to the paradigm laid out in Genesis 1.  We were not.  So a natural cause-and-effect judgment has come, a judgment similar to what typically happens when years of poor health choices lead to chronic diseases.  A similar story is outlined in the book of Revelation, in which the writer sees a series of images that represent the powers of the world that have risen prior to their great fall, namely Babylon in the guise of Rome, the modern worldly player of the time of the book’s writing.  And the author John describes his lamentation of the fall of this beast, seemingly the opposite of what we would expect the attitude of the reader/writer to be, until we realize we are to put ourselves in John’s perspective, in the role of propping up Babylon. The destruction that is occurring is of that which we have built up in the world.  The book Let Creation Rejoice by Jonathan Moo and Robert S. Smith gives a great guidance through this part of Revelation.  The described “babylonian” world in Revelation 18 portrays a queen who enjoyed the goods from the merchants of the ends of the earth, things which many of us moderns enjoy currently which may not in itself be bad except that it comes at the cost of “the bodies and souls of human beings.”  A human structure of the epitome of Good at the involuntary expense of others.  It could be construed that Babylon may even have been built on the involuntary expense of creation, removed from its purpose to meet our desires.  As I mentioned earlier, even the author John is mesmerized by our created order and laments at its fall.  However, there is a way out of this fallen idol in which we dwell, as a voice from heaven calls people to “come out of her, so that you may not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues.”  

            What follows after the collapse of Babylon is the celebration from the “multitude in heaven…representatives of the created order” (Rev 19:1-4) for the reclamation of creation by God, with the time for “destroying those who destroy the earth.”  This may be done with the created order wreaking the havoc that was asserted against itself.  In time, what is left is found in Rev 21-22, a new heaven and earth, with the holy city coming out of heaven to earth, for God to live among the people in this new earth.  God has made all things new, not all new things, an important distinction to tell us that his purpose is not to scrap the earth and have followers enter a new pie-in-the-sky heaven, but rather to reclaim this creation for what it was meant to be: a place for God and human to work and live together for industrious beauty.  A reminder of this is the return of the Eden Tree of Life, from which the River of Life flows.  The Eden tree is there to provide the fruit for humans and leaves to “heal the nations,” presumably from the disaster of their version of good and the aftermath from that.  Curiously, the new city has descriptors of earthly valuables and the “splendor of the kings of the earth.”  That seems contradictory with the description of Babylon, coated with merchant goods from around the world.  However, in reflecting back to Genesis 2, humans were created to do something with creation, not merely sit around streaming online content.  Creative human culture is a good thing and it is reflected in this image of the new Holy City.  But when those things become idols, or are acquired at the expense and dignity of the created order, we are in Babylon, not New Creation.  

            Since coronavirus brought our world to a screeching halt, with suffering to an extent our generation has never seen, we have found nature in a state approaching, though not necessarily very close to, that which Eden would have represented.  Rivers with visible life in them.  New heavens free from smog and carbon particles.  A world that was meant for us at the beginning of human history, perhaps a distant relative of what Revelation 21-22 is depicting.  My observations of a healing natural order in the midst of this human crisis may sound crass from the perspective of our species, and it is.  Many of us will die and have long-term sequelae from this viral beast.  Out of all this, though, is some glimmer of hope.  The hope of the Bible is that we may arrive at a point of this New Creation, where all things become new, functional in the way intended by God.  This idea is a mirror image between the Ideal of Genesis and Revelation 21, with the new heaven and new earth replacing the old version which has been corrupted and is now gone.  We were placed in the world, chose our own means by which to govern it, and created a mockery of our home.  One way or another, this has continued on through millennia, with new generations finding new ways to wreak havoc.  The results have been the raping of our world, mistreatment of the vulnerable among us, and a loss of our identity.  We see this through the generations of characters in the Israeli history, until they are utterly conquered and distributed to various ruling peoples.  Within this history lies the hope that someone can lead us out of this pattern, showing us what the rule of God looks like within us and our surroundings.  If we could somehow follow this example of ruling with God, and revisit our vocation as described in Genesis 2:15-17, we may be able to mitigate things like our current plight from recurrence.

Blog 12: Coronavirus (from perspective of spring 2020)

by rambler on category , , , , , ,

In late 2019 and early 2020, the human population of the world has come under attack of a novel viral infection with a combination of being more contagious, hardier, and deadlier than any recently known illness. As our world has grown more interconnected economically, culturally, and politically, it has done so similarly from a public health standpoint. Infectious particles are shared more readily due to ease of travel today than at any point in history. Like it or not, our technology has connected us so intimately that the phrase “we are all in this together” applies to all borders of our world.

The damage to our communal health has already been poignant at the time of this writing, with the likely potential that we remain far from the worst of what this virus will bring. Globally, thousands of lives have ended, and healthcare resources are past their breaking points as Italy has exempted graduating medical students from boards in order to push them into the front lines immediately, regardless of how under-prepared students are coming right out of school. Our societal norms have come to a screeching halt as schools, restaurants, and many retail stores have closed doors for at least a few weeks, with probably longer to come. As many of us already suffer from social isolation, many more now join those ranks, cut off from our daily habitual stops at coffee shops, the workplace, artistic and musical displays, sporting events, etc. For a species meant to live in community, we have had to essentially strip that identity from ourselves in order to persevere to a day where we can resume life of old.

Coinciding with social isolation is the economic fallout. Our service-based economy depends on social interaction, whether it be food service, entertainment venues, personal care appointments, travel, or leisure. Self-isolation allows for much of the economy to continue functioning as more of us work from home, but it leaves a major part of it workerless. As markets plunge in ways not seen for many decades, one prominent investor, while suggesting the USA “shut down” for a month, used the phrase “hell is coming” to describe the financial prospects in the near future. That may not be hyperbole for many people who find themselves out of work, unable to pay routine bills or debts. In North Carolina, applications for unemployment benefits have shot up in a matter of days. The uncertainty pertaining to the length of mass isolation has an exhausting, nerve-racking effect on all of us, but much more so on those of us who haven’t a clue when the next time they can go to work may be.

For many people, hell is not coming, but rather it has arrived. Lost human connection, lost daily purpose of work, lost security in a reliable income, and unknown concern for our health and our neighbors’ would be a form of hell. All this from a particle measuring 120 nanometers, only seen by an electron microscope. How did this thing get here? Pandemics as this one come around every several years, usually not lasting long enough to make the whole world stop in its tracks. This one has.

Many of these contagious viruses originate in animal species. Humans have a routine collection of coronaviruses that circulate only among humans and cause common colds, and many animals have their own sets of coronaviruses. Very rarely, a virus that is specific for an animal species will mutate into a form that can infiltrate human populations. That is what happened with the MERS and SARS epidemics of recent decades. Per the CDC, all these viruses have their origins in bats. In this case, many believe that the outbreak began in a large animal market in Wuhan, where many live animals are caged in close quarters, ready to be sold for food or medicinal purposes. While common in China, these markets are not solely found in China, but can be found in other parts of Asia and Africa. While first world countries do not organize animal markets in a similar style and setting as other poorer nations, they still maintain animal trade as a significant contributor to the economy. So essentially all nations participate in some form of animal market. The idea that this virus came from a bioterror lab, rather than an animal market, is not ruled out as the WHO tries (and fails) to get to the bottom of the origins of the virus. The fact is, whether harvested from a lab or a market, the virus originates in bats and then “jumps species” to infect humans.

If one is following the storyline of the first few pages of the Bible, it should come as no surprise that there is a direct link between the arrest and utilization by death of animal species and what we find ourselves in today. We opt for our own understanding of what is best for us and our families and neglect what has been provided for us as the ideal Order in which we were placed. We decline the vision of a place where the fruit-bearing plants are the only things we need to live the lives we were meant to live. We decline the role of being caretakers of the animals and their lands, which were meant to provide their nourishment. Instead we choose their blood to immediately satiate our appetites. The Ideal state is given to us as long as we choose God’s wisdom and decline our own version of what appears good in our eyes. Just like the innumerable times before us that humans have chosen their version of the Good, so have we.

As I have stated before, I don’t think Genesis 1 is meant simply to give us a direct, clean portrayal of what we should be doing within our cultures. That is what we would want of any written piece as modern readers. That is what makes good communication to us: concise, direct statements of what is expected of us and what we can expect. The primary purpose of the story is directed to the critical point in the Garden of humans having to choose between God’s wisdom and their own. I think, beyond the crucial test in the middle of the Garden, there are things being told to us in this story about how we are to interact with the earth on which we are placed. The wisdom and knowledge of these writings permeates all times and cultures, because they speak to the essence of the human experience, which doesn’t change, no matter what point of technological advancement we have achieved. The manner in which we interact with animals, whether by God’s standard as co-dwellers of the earth, with animals and humans providing for the other so they may live out their true created identities, or by our standard of taking what we see as good and manipulating it in whichever manner we see would best suit our desires for control and comfort, will go a long way in determining whether we can maintain a functional ecosystem for continuing existence, or whether we decide to bring hell directly to us.

On a recent reading of Genesis, I noticed that the Garden inside of Eden wasn’t created until the second chapter, after the symmetry of Genesis 1 had already been laid out. The second account has a more specific narrative pattern to tell the story of the first humans and their created home in this garden in Eden, which we frequently assume to be the perfect, ideal situation for us that we screwed up by taking from the wrong tree. The first account seems more distant from the specific story. It rather has a more general tone to it, describing the common creation outside of the proper place of Eden. We may tend to think that the Eden ideal is not worth trying to get back to, as we have and will fail to reach that goal of complete unity of mind with the creator god. One may argue that we ought still to strive to this goal for myriad reasons, though let’s say it isn’t worth the effort to go for this level of “perfection” in our world with inevitable failure in the shadows. We are still left with the creation model of Genesis 1, outside of the garden temple, yet still within the confines of our surrounding world. As we surely find ourselves outside of Eden, we might be able to relate to the Genesis 1 creation narrative more so than Genesis 2. That is a more direct instruction on the structure of life within the created world, clearly stating humans are to eat seed-bearing plants and animals are to eat the green grasses of the field.

Following the guidance of eating the seed-bearing plants can improve our chances of leading lives free from heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, etc, and it can enable us to have bodies capable of amazing feats of strength and endurance. These ideas are commonly conveyed in books on the subject. What we don’t often think about are those zoonotic infections that arise from time to time in our environments, which are commonly derived from improper use of animals by humans. They don’t come around very often, but when they do they can create complete chaos and destruction of what humans have built up. This can be seen as a consequence of inadequate relationship within creation, failing to live according to what has been arranged for us. We can create hell as a present reality in which we may wander around hopelessly. We can also allow for the creation of heaven similarly.

Blog 7: Backward vs Forward?

by rambler on category , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is the Genesis story meant to cause reflections and lamentations on the world as it was, in the “good old days”, and nothing more?  We often tend to read these stories as reflections on human history, stories to listen to in church or Sunday school, maybe memorize some characters from them for treats at the end of the lesson, then move on to Monday.  My general experience in American church is that these stories are reviewed briefly, but almost all focus of teaching is on the New Testament.  Maybe that is not ubiquitous in the USA, but I have noticed that.  Subsequently, I had fallen into that mindset as well, not really thinking much relevance of the Torah.  I would read it as part of a pursuit from the first to last page of the Bible, mostly without thinking of what it may be trying to say.

farmhouse

As Spencer points out, the idea of an era that is void of conflict and violence is common to religion, and that this is suggestive of an era of veganism or vegetarianism, in which life does not have to kill other life in order to ensure its survival.  He shares an opinion that this thread comes from a historical memory buried within the make-ups of early humans, who perhaps unknowingly inherited such a history.  These legends are meant as a reflection back toward that period of peace and tranquility, and the roles of them in religion are to allow us to have self-soothing visions of such a time and place in the middle of a bloody, aggressive world geared toward taking out animals for food.

I would venture to say that some people brought up in religion might see the texts of Genesis similarly, as a reflection to a better time.  It is how we are taught to read stories written in the past, as narratives that happened then, separated from us in our present context.  It is how I read the Bible for years, which caused me to feel pretty disengaged.  But is this the correct way to read it?  Might it have something to say in our current day situation, more than just a memory of old?

Perhaps we should view the creation account as a prospective possibility rather than a retrospective history.  There is some idea that the myths of the Ideal Age in many cultures are stories of a paradise never realized rather than a description of a past that is lost.  As I stated earlier, God puts people in the Garden to work it, to create something from what already exists there into a better state.  We may think that Eden was perfect and complete as it was made, but this isn’t the idea behind it.  The mission of God was to rule with humans to progress toward something bigger and better than what they started with.  In the intended progression of time, this theme would have continued into the future had humans not fallen.

We take for granted our ability to perceive information as infinite and beyond face value, evidenced in that we see situations, assess them, and inflict an external force into that situation to bring about a new, desired reality.  We constantly receive and process data, then we come up with a response that may totally change what we found, often through experimentation.  We do not accept our knowledge base as intrinsically bounded.  If we did, when we came upon some unexplained phenomenon, we would simply accept it without thought.  This likely describes Homo erectus, as the evidence suggests they themselves didn’t change much in their million-year existence.  By accepting the world at face value and taking what they could to survive, they remained essentially a stagnant species.

Interpreting knowledge as beyond the immediately observable, something to be discovered with a little forethought, is a big step in the evolution of Homo sapiens.  The production of better tools enabled humans to experiment with and exert control over their environment, thus allowing for the acquisition of new knowledge from experimentation.  This ability to manipulate the environment, to coerce it to do what one wants it to do, is a game changer in the evolution and extinction of species.  Humans now would have been able to cultivate the earth, providing a more reliable food source than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would have provided.  Hence Homo sapiens was moving toward becoming the dominant species, and Homo erectus was moving toward extinction.

That’s not to say that the only thing humans did with technology was cultivate the earth.  Obviously, early bands of humans used tools to kill and eat larger animals that they would never have been able to take down on their own physical abilities.  What is interesting is the manner in which many groups approached the hunting and killing of animals for their consumption.  Growing up in the USA, we learn about Native Americans in school.  Most of us may remember that they always used every bit of the animal that they killed (bison is the typical example) for food, clothing, and shelter.  They never killed (or gathered) more than they needed to live.  Many people have romantic memories of Native Americans and thoughts about that kind of kinship with the ecosystem, using only what you need and leaving the rest to flourish. 

With the various crises in our ecological world today, we often question whether the earth can sustain life as we know it, whether the world holds the resources to house all of us.  Life has mechanisms of controlling a level of homeostasis, whether it is in sustainable populations and ratios of species, the food chain, or intermittent epidemics or natural disasters.  With our ever-progressing technologies beyond simple hunter-gatherer tools, humans have intervened in the stabilizing life cycle, i.e. vaccinations, protective measures against certain natural disasters, best efforts to prevent wars, etc.  It appears that the pessimistic answer is the most accurate, that the earth cannot sustain us all.  That is probably true if we feel we own the right to ravage it of all resources, above and beyond what we need to survive and thrive.  In our current world of overabundance and materialism, it is easy to subscribe to this attitude of “having it all”.  If we were to follow a similar wisdom of some of these ancients, taking only what we need, our answer to the question may change.  We may find ourselves in a more generous world that can sustain us.  Eden represents an abundant world that is enough, but only if we decide that we won’t pursue wisdom on our terms, and rather opt for the Tree of Life.

Some of that sounds like the takeaways from Sunday school, that the world used to be such a great place, and now it isn’t.  Like with the Genesis narrative, we can look at Native American history, ruminate over it, and return to our original worldview.  In line with the anthropologic purpose of legend, we can take these images and soothe ourselves with them, have a break in our otherwise mundane existence.  But, rather than treat these stories passively, what if we approached them as another tool to use toward our evolution?  What if they represented what could be in our world today?  And now we have the other “nuts and bolts”, both physical and digital tools, to more effectively make that happen.  I would hope that our desire is that we as humans are progressing toward something better that what we were.  We all have periods of regression, individually and societally.  We can choose, in various circumstances, whether we will exert the Genesis 3 human idea of our wisdom in our lives, and dwell in the desert to scrounge out a living, thus finding that our earth, despite all its generosity, is in fact a desert in our eyes.  Or we can use our developed brains and tools to mold our world in the reflection of the wisdom superior to our own and maybe begin to realize what was initially intended for us: an abundant world that becomes evermore abundant.

Blog Post 5: Human Choice

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Olduvai gorge
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

An anthropologic approach may be helpful to shed some nuanced light on Genesis wisdom.  Many people feel the two vantage points of science and religion are inherently antagonistic.  But if they are read and interpreted on their terms in their contexts (not on our terms or our expectations on what we think they should say), I think we would find that utilizing both together could shed much light on understanding our present situation.  The archaeological records provide some clue as to the diets that human ancestors consumed, though because those records have holes in them, a lot of what we deduce from them is conjecture.  But that is how we use science: taking available information and explaining the story that correlates with the data.  So it would be a worthwhile exercise to consider the different relations between what the fossil record indicates and how those conclusions relate to our world today.

            The fossil records indicate that hominoid ancestors lived as vegetarians over 20 million years ago.  One of the more obvious indications of such is their dental structure.  They had flat molars with a large grinding surface and thick enamel, and large incisors, which are good for grinding nuts and plants.  Carnivorous animals had sharp molars and underdeveloped incisors, which is more suited for tearing into flesh.   Later hominoids (Ramapithecus) developed the ability to chew laterally and vertically, as opposed to the strictly vertical movement of the ape jaw, which is also a noted feature of carnivores.  This would suggest more specialization in the ability for rotational chewing which would be even better suited for crushing hardier plant foods, likely more abundant than softer more exotic foods during the Miocene Ice Age.  So that development perhaps was more a result of a climatic shift forcing adaptation for available foods or extinction, the appearance of hardier nut- and grass-containing savannah lands and less forested ones.

Other differences between hominoid ancestors and carnivores exist.  Hominoids did not have the clawed structure that carnivores did, neither the ability to sprint at 60 mph for brief spurts.  Their gut, like herbivores, was much longer to allow slower digestion required for the breakdown of fibrous foods.  That of carnivores is notably shorter, which is quite important for them in order to expel waste promptly through shorter bowels, as animal is more toxic than plant waste.  Carnivores also had smaller salivary glands, good night vision, a rasping tongue, and skin without pores, features that would aid in the hunting, consumption, and processing of flesh for food.

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As time progressed, some of our more recent ancestors continued to rely on primarily, if not solely, various plants like fruits, roots, and leaves.  A very famous fossilized hominin, Lucy, was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.  She is estimated to have lived around 3.2 million years ago, and her scientific name is Australopithecus afarensis.  Her structure suggests she was bipedal, which would be more important for leaving the forests to live in the expanding African savannahs around this time in history.  A similar relative, Australopithecus robustus, arrived almost a million years later and was similar to afarensis except that it was larger and had a remarkable crest at to top of the head, allowing for powerful jaw muscles to originate from that ridge.  That plus the fact that it had thick, large molars suggest it also ate mostly roots, bark, seeds, and grains, which would have required such an oral structure for pulverization.  While meat could have been a part of their diet, it likely would have been miniscule as there is no evidence that they used tools and did not have the strength to kill other beasts (Lucy was 3’7” tall).  The dental remains strongly shows they consumed a varied plant diet.

Around 2 million years ago is when homo habilis arrived, the next of kin so to speak of the genus Australopithecus.  Remains from this species reveal a larger brain and primitive small tools, mainly axes.  They were likely scavengers rather than hunters, feasting upon the remains left by more adept killers like felines, and they could climb trees to reach the remains left by cat predators.  From habilis came Homo erectus.  Evidence reveals they utilized more varied tools.  Fossils of both smaller and larger animals have been found at H. erectus excavation sites in East Africa.  These appear to be the first hunters and regular consumers of meat, and their dental records show that the large grinding cheek teeth are gone, and the front teeth are sharper.  The fact that meat became a more regular dietary staple may in fact have enhanced both brain development (though encephalization was already advanced well before evidence of hunting was found in the fossil records, putting that idea into question), and provided a highly dense energy source that would allow them to develop skills other than food gathering.  But food gathering was still a significant portion of the diet, still more than half, according to Rosalind Miles Women’s History of the World.

            This jump from eating plants to hunting animals may have initially come not from the desire to kill for meat, but from the need to kill for plants.  In some archeological sites, baboon bones are found alongside Australopithecus bones, with the idea that Australopithecus killed baboons according to Peter Wilson (Man, the Promising Primate).  The idea is that early humans had to kill competitors in order to secure a food supply.  As they were not nearly as strong as their competitors, they had to use their developing brains and work together, with assistance of newly developed technologies, in order to have food.  Based on their biology, humans are built more for plant eating and not for direct competitions of strength with larger animals.  But because of the pressures of the environment, competition for food, and the attributes of encephalization, they were able to come up with ways to kill other animals in order to preserve their diet.

            Other than simply taking out competition, early human precursors Homo erectus and, to a more advanced degree, Homo sapien neanderthalensis also began migrating off the African continent.  As they could take advantage of more varied environments than other animals, yet were in many ways inferior in direct one-on-one combat, they were more suited for migration than other more specialized species.  Their developed brains permitted them to retain the necessary skills for successful migration.  Herbivores are committed to a specific niche, needing only to remember the seasonal cycles of blooming and ripening.  Nomadic life demands adaptability, extensive use of memory, acuity of senses, recall of detail, assessment of new landscapes, acquisition of new technologies (including fire), and sharing that data with others of the group in order to be successful.  The processing of large amounts of data is essential to surviving in an ever-changing environment with the ebbs and flows of migrating food sources and unfamiliar seasonal patterns of new plant life.  I like how Colin Spencer puts these new phenomena in the perspective of the developing mind:

Nothing is more comforting than the thought of power and control over one’s environment.  Not to make tools, not to migrate and trek, not to hunt and kill other creatures, would seem like a return to a lesser, more primitive state of development.

Such a perspective would be essential for Neanderthals to survive in the cold, barren northern wastelands during the Ice Age.  With limited plant life to consume compared with the temperate regions of Africa and the Levant, they would have to assert their will over their environment in order to survive.  A failure to control their environment would result in death.
            While obviously not a direct correlation, it resonates ideas of Genesis 3.  Humans are in the Garden, not in competition with other life forms because everything they could possibly need to thrive is set before them.  They are given a role as caretaker and meant to create order in the world.  Then the Fall happens when they see something that they consider good, despite being told it will kill them, and rely on their own wisdom and take the forbidden fruit, exerting their authority over their lives, and resulting in expulsion from the Garden out into the wastelands of the earth to wrench sustenance out of the ground.  It is as if humans were banished to the outer edges of an Ice Age world, out of a paradise and into a desert with severely limited food options and a requirement to in fact exert their superiority over the rest of creation in order to survive.

            This is certainly not an attempt to explain how early human ancestors ended up in the higher latitudes during a prehistoric Ice Age, or why they ended up living a lifestyle of meat consumption over plants.  Both the religious and scientific narratives are created from different sources and have different expectations of and from the reader.  But I think there are many areas of overlap between them, with this being one of them.  When we try to exert our will, our definition of what is good and bad for ourselves, and rule the earth according to our own wisdom, we end up where God never intended us to: in the proverbial desert struggling to survive, in our own version of a barren Ice Age, a place where we continue to reinforce our own law if we are to survive there.  To us, that seems like progress.  From another point of view, that seems like regression.  Is it better to live in the Garden under a better Wisdom or to live in the desert under our wisdom?  We see many examples in the Bible in which humans, in attempt to become God, become like the beasts of the field, the first example being when God covers humans’ skin with the skins of animals in Genesis 3:21.  Neanderthals did not result from reverse evolution; rather they were more advanced from those previous species that ate the plants.  And I don’t think the Bible is saying we need to be more simple creatures like the plant-eating precursors of Neanderthals.  There are some ideas that Neanderthals were not precursors of humans, but rather the end of a line that died out with no long-term progeny.  If that were true, it would make the correlation with the Genesis narrative even more curious.

Blog Post 4: Garden Temple

by rambler on category , , , , , ,

The idea of a place from which the divine uniquely emanates into the world, where God’s space and Human’s space intersect, in the form of a garden bursting with life and abundance, is a very old and common idea throughout the ancient world.  Cultures surrounding the ancient Hebrews had their own mythologies concerning the dwelling places of deities in gardens.  Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians are some of the people groups that had “garden temples” incorporated into their heritage.  In this part of the world, known for arid deserts and scarce pockets of water and plant life, gardens must have had a special reverence, places of restoration, nourishment, and healing.  It is no wonder that we associated these life-bursting locales with divinity.

In concert with their neighbors, the Hebrews held the garden of Eden in similar esteem: a place where God touched the earth to create ordered, bountiful life that would self-perpetuate, creating more energy and beauty.  It represents the ultimate temple imagery in the three dimensional world (the Sabbath rest represents the garden temple in the fourth dimension of time), an image that was recreated by the Hebrew people after their release from Egypt in the form of a transportable tabernacle, then a stationary temple in Jerusalem.  Interestingly, the parts of the tabernacle have corresponding parts to the Garden of Eden.  The large surrounding courtyard of the tabernacle corresponds with the region of Eden; the holy place within the courtyard, with the Garden inside Eden; and the holy of holies within the holy place, with the tree of life within the Garden.  The tree of life is the most special place inside the garden, as it contains the gift of ultimate communion between divinity and humanity, that of eternal life in some form.  It is the place where God and humanity meet, where the worlds intersect, and where humans can experience the life they were intended to know.  It was the perfect overlapping of heaven and earth.  This is an idea that moderns may correlate with our cultural idea of “heaven”, whether that is a historically accurate notion of heaven or not.

This place of abundant life and beauty was not an absolute idea that had always been in existence.  The wording of the start of the Genesis 2 creation narrative indicates something missing.  “Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up.”  The plant life made on day 3 of creation in Genesis 1 is yet to appear on the Earth for apparently two reasons: 1) God had yet to send rain on the earth and 2) no one was available to work the ground.  Why are both considered reasons for a lack of fauna on the Earth?

Concerning the first necessity, the same sentence describes water already present.  “…but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.”  So water was available for the creation and propagation of life, but apparently it wasn’t good enough to actually create and propagate life.  There must be something unique in the water that comes from the sky that permits growth that water from the surface does not.  The idea of life-giving water coming from the gods above is also seen in neighboring cultures.  An example is the Egyptian sky goddess Nut, who nurses the earth from her breasts, which produce life-giving water.  Similarly, God, living in heaven, gifts the earth with his own living rains to nourish and renew the land.  This water from above is different from the water below.  The waters in Genesis 1, from which land arises on day 3 of creation, were previously described as part of the formless and void earth, part of the chaos that was the world before God intervened.  Throughout the Bible, chaotic waters carry an evil symbolism for the Hebrew people (i.e. Egyptians in Exodus 15, the story of Jonah).  In Genesis 2, one may conclude that the waters coming up from the ground are part of those same chaos waters from which the earth arose and on which it is essentially floating.  So the waters from God above are very different from the waters below.  One is life sustaining, the other life taking.

 After rain, the second requirement for plant life is the lack of a worker.  Every material thing now exists for life from the ground to flourish, except for the action of organizing those things into a form that starts the process of life.    This must mean that, in order for trees and shrubs to exist, a partnership between humans and God is essential.  This is what the original destiny of humankind was: God and humans in the garden ruling together, working to continue the work that was started after creation, a partnership between the deity and his image-bearers.  We often think that the Garden was perfect as it was, and that our role was to simply occupy it.  This notion does not honor the vocation we were given to be workers of the Garden, to take creation and work alongside God to make it into something more complete and beautiful than it originally was.

In a primarily agrarian society, it would make sense that a description of the intended state of partnership between God and humans be centered around farming.  This would have resonated more with ancient peoples in their environment than with moderns.  When we think of creating culture, we don’t primarily have reflections around plots of land sprouting herbs and fruits.  We tend to think more about cities, cafes, and museums.  We can certainly consider that the story is more about the idea of God and humans getting together to progress toward some greater collaboration than original creation, not just how plants are grown.  But the story could have described the partnership established to raise animals for eating, but it doesn’t.  Typical of the Hebrew Bible, we are seeing several meanings and points of reflection in a single story.  We can likely take meanings of both generalized order and nutritional order from the narrative.

It was only after both rain and workers were in place that God created the Garden Temple, the ideal meeting place of heaven and earth.  “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.”  Like any good cosmic temple of the ancient Near East, the Garden occupies a high space, a mountaintop, one origin from which life-giving waters flow forth.

In the Genesis account of the ancient world, the four rivers listed in Genesis, the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates, all emanated from a single river flowing through Eden.  While the locations of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are well-established, the historical locations of the Pishon and Gihon are not.  Many ancient and modern scholars have proposed various theories as to the identifications of these rivers, from Ethiopia representing the Nile River, even south of that to Zimbabwe, to various locations in the Middle East.  Whatever the designation of the Pishon and Gihon rivers may be, all of these rivers of the ancient world were essential to the development of civilization, humans coming together to create ordered societies where people could survive and flourish, using the resource of fresh flowing water to farm the land for sustenance.  The significance of these major ancient life sources starting from a singularity in Eden, flowing from there and encompassing the known world at that time, may be the idea that this points to a single origin of Order, the co-mingling of God and Human space in which the sustaining Life Source starts in its perfect form, and is so abundant in life-giving energy, that it makes its way throughout the land, spreading out and providing welcoming homes for the incubation of human development.  If the Garden of Eden is the perfect co-mingled junction of God-space and Human-space, and from it flows identifiable river landmarks of the ancient world that also generate life, might that say something about our current situation outside of Eden and its relationship to this co-mingled point in space-time?  A potential point of the writer may be that all of our societies have their roots from this origin, all sharing some part of the DNA of the origin, and are to some degree a reflection of the origin.  Despite the terrible, hideous, unjust things we create, in our root there is a perfect idyllic purpose from which amazing things also come.

This is the kingdom of heaven in effect, more of an action of events than a place far away.  Being brought up in a scientific, physical world of reality, we tend to have in our minds that heaven is a physical place in a physical space somewhere away from where we are.  We are generally uncomfortable with ambiguity, and this idea of heaven lends to ambiguity.  It seems the Bible is putting a different emphasis on what and where heaven is.  If it is more of a state of being, a mindset to which we can conform, following the wisdom laid out for us, this will allow us to begin experiencing heaven now, in our present forms, with the mental and physical acuity that our bodies were meant to experience.

The Relationship

by rambler on category , , , , , , , , , ,

After recognizing the pattern of the Genesis 1 creation account of paired days and themes, evidently there is a special connection between the seed-bearing and fruit-bearing plants and trees on the land (the final creative act of day 3), and the humans created in the image of the gods (the final creative act of day 6).  What is the connection?

Genesis 1:29 gives one straightforward response to the question: all seed-bearing plants and trees that produce fruit are meant to be food for humans.  That is our nourishment in the ideal, pre-fallen state.  All acts of creation have aligned to set up this perfect homeostasis of life-sustaining energy.  We are intricately connected to the plants both in the creation patterns and in the time following the story.  If we are to believe that Genesis 1 is a story of the world set up the way God intended it, and that all the pain and suffering that we see today originated at the choice of humankind to pursue its own wisdom represented by eating the forbidden fruit, then we must recognize that everything that was put in place prior to that event was at perfect form and functionality, one aspect of which is how humans eat.  By no means is this the only notion to be drawn from the passage.  The idea of humans and trees sharing a functional commonality is another.  But it is one.

Immediately following the proclamation of seed-bearing trees as food for humans, God commands the green grasses and plants be as food for the beasts of the earth, birds of the sky, and…

The connection of seed-bearing plants and humans are actually one of a few intimate relationships established by God on day 6. Immediately following the proclamation of seed-bearing trees as food for humans, God commands the green grasses and plants be as food for the beasts of the earth, birds of the sky, and creatures moving along the ground.  This doesn’t match up as nicely in the creation day mapping scheme as fruit trees and humans, as the plants are still the second creative act on day 3, but birds were created on day 5 and the beasts of the earth were the first creative act on day 6.  Nevertheless, the plan for animal kind, everything that has the breath of life (God’s ruach, Hebrew translated spirit, in animals and humans), receives the gift of plants as food.  So people aren’t the only ones for whom this is an ideal, but animals are also included.  This obviously comes into contradiction with what we simply observe in the animal kingdom: some animals can only eat other animals to live, i.e. felines.  I will get into this later, but we do know that humans can make a choice to live according to this principle and live well.

Another established relationship in this story is that between animals and humans.  In Genesis 1:28, we are told to rule over the animals and subdue the earth.  On initial reading, to us this seems like a green light to utilize all of creation as we see fit.  Several critics have cited this as the reason the Western world has made a habit of using and abusing our planet: it is both permitted and demanded by our religious tradition.  We seem to have a knack for, with the aid of modern technology, manipulating the earth to accommodate us and our desires, to the point of wreckage.  The same may be said for the animals.  If we need them to meet our nutritional needs by being a direct source of calories, so be it.  That is why they are here. 

We practically can already see some problems with this mindset in our current place on Earth.  As we manipulate our technologies for our liking, we see the detriment this is having in our environment.  Climate change has become a pretty complex issue, but it does appear to be at least in part due to human activity.  It is well established that the harvesting of animals for human consumption also leaves a larger carbon footprint than the harvesting of plants.  Science has established this data recently, but we should have recognized that disaster would happen when we interpret Genesis 1:28 as a free reign for our desires.

We may make the assumption that the relationship between humans and animals is only vertical.  We rule them, case closed.  Looking at the creation patterns, this doesn’t appear to be the case.  We also have a horizontal relationship with animals, as we were created on the same day as they.  We are creatures just as they are, made on the same day as the land creatures, sharing that day of creation with them.  All life forms, unicellular or multicellular, plant or animal, sea swimmer or land rover, fall under the auspices of creation and the physical laws that govern it.  After the animals were created, God stated that what he created was good, just as he did after all other creative acts in Genesis 1.  This suggests that all of creation was already good in and of itself before we showed up.  That should remove some entitlement we may feel as the only important part of creation.

But rather we are intimately connected with the earth as evidenced by the Genesis 2 creation account.

We are not separated from the earth, dropped down here from some other realm to make use of what we find.  But rather we are intimately connected with the earth as evidenced by the Genesis 2 creation account.  This states man was formed from the dust of the earth and had life breathed into him, hence the name of the first man as Adam (from the Hebrew adamah, “of the ground”).  Mankind is formed as the weird combination of “dirt and divine breath (Hebrew ruach)”.  That should make us rethink our relationship with the earth, that we are intimately connected with it, and that anything we do to it, any means of disrespect and negligence we exhibit, will come back to affect us accordingly.

So our relationship with the rest of creation is not a simple linear pattern of one entity above the other.  We are told to rule the animals, but at the same time we are on something of equal footing with them.  Both animals and humans share a relationship with the botanical creation of day 3, assigned to use those resources as our food.  And humans have a specific relationship with the earth, commanded by God to subdue it.  Reading Genesis in its ancient context, subdue most likely refers to farming the ground, as the ancient Near Eastern cultures reading or listening to this narrative were primarily agrarian.  In Genesis 2, the second creation narrative, humans are put in a garden, where their food source is fruit-bearing trees, and told to “work and care for” the garden, in other words farm the ground.  In fact, no plants had yet showed up on earth until humankind was created because, in part, there was no one yet created to work the ground.  But while we are told to subdue the plant-producing earth, we see that if by subdue we mean abuse and disrespect, following our own wisdom and working toward our idea of what is right for us, our intimate connection with the earth will cause us to feel the effects, however welcoming or catastrophic they may be.  The effects of treating the earth in this way can be expressed in God’s curse to Adam in Genesis 3 after he decides that God’s wisdom is secondary to his own by eating the forbidden fruit:

Cursed is the ground

Because of you;
Through painful toil you
Will eat food from it
All the days of your life
It will produce thorns and thistle for you
And you will eat the plants of the field

By following our own wisdom, making our own choices for ourselves and our rule of the earth, suddenly what should be existence in a harmonious garden in which life cannot help but sprout up the best of what the plant kingdom has to offer, becomes a struggle against the earth to strangle from it life-sustaining nourishment.

We are also made aware by God in Genesis 1:30 the relationship between animals and the earth, not directly involving humans.  They are to have the green plants as food.  Why should we care what they are given to eat or not?  We know that we have the fruit-bearing trees.  This is likely a warning to humans from God concerning our stewardship, as subduers and rulers over earth and animal, that that relationship between the animals and green plants is sacred, and part of our responsibility in ruling alongside God is to make sure the relationship is preserved and allowed to flourish.  We are not to utilize the whole earth for our own immediate good, but to reflect, as image-bearers carrying out God’s rule on earth, the care God gives to all of creation by helping protect this other sacred relationship.  Therefore, we are not to ransack the earth for all its resources, but rather to use what we need in order to live, trusting that God has created a generous space capable of taking care of all creatures.

After every creative process, the end of every day of creation, God sees that what he has created is good.  This is repeated six times in Genesis 1, all immediately after the acts of creation: light, gathering of the seas, vegetation, heavenly bodies, sea creatures and birds, and wild land animals.  However, he doesn’t say this right after humans are created.  Rather, after humans arrive, God proclaims humans’ role, and the role of plants and seed-bearing trees for animals and humans, and after that proclamation does God say that this is very good, clearly a more emphasized statement from what he has previously said.  While all of creation had been proclaimed good up to this point, apparently the final statements of order at the end of the chapter, statements laying out the functional relationships among living creatures and the earth that houses them, have added exponentially, not just summarily, to the quality of creation.  I think this means we are not to take these final statements lightly.  We may want to really consider what they mean for our purpose and symbiosis with the world and with God.

The Cosmic Landscape

by rambler on category , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the entirety of the structure of the world and our relationship with it can be found on the first three pages of Genesis.  Everything that happens forward from there, from the stories of the first ancient peoples, to those of the Hebrew nation starting with Abraham, to a resolution for Christians in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, can draw roots from this introduction.  I never realized this until recently, thanks to The Bible Project Podcast, which I cannot recommend highly enough, whether you are religious or are curious to know more about the basis for Christianity.  This understanding has revolutionized the way I see the entire story of humankind and the earth.

Before any word of creation is spoken, Genesis narrates that the world was Tohu wa-bohu (translations include formless, void, wild and waste).

We find the initial structure of creation, including time and space, as God turning disorder into order.  Before any word of creation is spoken, Genesis narrates that the world was Tohu wa-bohu (translations include formless, void, wild and waste).  There are many different interpretations of what was actually there, but the wording suggests that the earth did exist in the beginning, at least before God’s first act of speaking, though it was in a “nothingness” state.  That changed the way I looked at the creation story as traditionally taught.  We like to have definitively established boundaries in describing our world, and are uncomfortable when boundaries get blurred.  It is much easier in our minds to comprehend the universe starting at an instant, the beginning of time.  We want to think that at some point there was nothing, then suddenly something appeared.  This isn’t a bad thing, but it is a bias we should recognize, the need for a firmly established order of events.  It is what the singularity of the Big Bang attempts to explain.  The same holds true for those of us wanting the creation narrative to say the same thing: a fundamental starting point, a sequence of events, then here we are.

Reading the passages of Genesis 1, I think the story expresses something more about the process of turning chaos into functionality, not specifically the start of something out of nothing, but more so the ordering of material that was already there.  In an already existent realm of “wild and waste”, God’s first act of order is the separation of light and dark, our most recognizable form of energy and the lack thereof, of visibility and blindness.  A stubbed toe on the foot of the bed in the middle of the night makes it clear to me that the two are separated!  More comprehensively, we see different worlds come out whether it is day or night.  Take a walk outside your house during the night and day and the sights, sounds, environment, and inhabitants of each time vary extensively.  Most notable of the differences may be the sources of light that rule each time period, as described on day 4 (the coinciding function of days 1 and 4 is another fun pattern to talk about later).

Repetition is also a form of order that is established right at the story’s beginning by establishing a recurring pattern of evening and morning.  It starts right after the initial proclamation of light and dark and continues throughout the first creation narrative.  All that happens from here on out through Genesis 1, happens within the confines of repeating organized days.

The first creation day appears to establish order around the functional concept of time, rather than the start of something material out of nothing, as the watery abyss was already present before the first word in Genesis 1:2.  The second day of creation is more concerned with the first ordering of the space that is present, namely waters.  Waters above, heaven, separated from waters below, on Earth.  Just as day 4 bore the inhabitants of day 1 creation, day 5 bears the inhabitants of day 2 creation, the waters below to be filled with sea creatures and the waters above to be filled with birds.

Day 3 focuses the ordering of space more narrowly toward the waters below, that area which we occupy, rather than the waters above, or the heavens.  On day 3 we see a 2-fold origin sequence.  From the waters below that have been separated from the heavens, comes forth 1) dry land out of the sea; from the dry land comes forth 2) seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees.  Day 6 repeats the pattern of the creation of inhabitants for the day 3 world as day 5 did for day 2.  Day 6, like day 3, contains a two-fold creative process: God makes 1) the animals which come forth from the land and 2) humans.  Unlike day 3 on which plants come forth from the land, there is no specific statement that humans came forth from animals on day 6.  That would fit the creative pattern seen on day 3, and those of us who wrestle with trying to make scientific knowledge and faith congruent may see this as pointing toward an evolutionary process for the creation of humans.  I don’t think that is a question that this narrative is concerned with.  Perhaps a connection more likely than animals from humans would be between trees and humans as the final acts of creation on days 3 and 6, which is another path of contemplation that could be related to nutrition as well.  Either way, as 21st century scientifically minded people, we need to be cautious of the presuppositions we bring to the text, the notions of what questions we think the Bible should answer for us, rather than letting it speak to us on its terms in its context.

At this point we can see the pairings of creation days: days 1 and 4 (light/dark and the inhabitants of both domains), days 2 and 5 (waters above and below, and the inhabitants of both domains), and days 3 and 6 (land bursting with green vegetation, and the land’s inhabitants).  I was certainly never taught this growing up in an American church environment, which is disappointing to me now that the story of Genesis 1, reading the patterns in this way, has a suddenly new significance for me that is so much more beautiful and purposeful in describing our world and the functionality of it!  Understanding these patterns has brought to light a new concept of the order of the creative process, one that is more nuanced and dense in imagery than I could have imagined. 

I wonder if part of missing these patterns has to do with the contemporary way we learn and interpret our world.  As I stated earlier, as moderns we look for literal, black and white sequential events or points in time from which to tell our stories, whether it is creative fiction (though the magical realists may differ on this one), guides for assembling Ikea furniture (that seems a pretty practical reason for such story-telling), or the origins of our place in the universe.  Genesis 1 refuses to comply with this world-view.  How can green plants thrive on dry land before the arrival of the sun?  But by reading Genesis on its terms, understanding the design patterns from which it originates, we find an incredible world of wisdom that can open our minds to the structure and purpose of the created world.  This in turn may help us begin to comprehend the Order behind it all, the Order which resides in us as image-bearers, that which has established an ideal existence for all living things.

For further reading on these ideas, The Lost World of Genesis One by John H. Walton is a great book that discusses this subject in more detail. It is very accessible for us nonscholars and challenges the approach many of us have taken to these ancient scriptures to provide a rich interpretation of the first book of the Bible.

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